Notes From The Library, Issue No. 49

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Issue No. 49 September 2003 http://library.ust.hk/

New University Librarian: Dr. Samson Soong

Dr. Samson Soong Being appointed as University Librarian to succeed Mrs. Min-min Chang, Dr. Samson Soong joined the University on 1 July. Dr. Soong comes to HKUST from Rutgers University where he was Associate University Librarian for Administrative Services, a position he had held since 1993. Over the last 32 years he served in increasingly responsible positions in the Rutgers University Libraries, a leading research library system of 18 libraries in the United States. Prior to joining Rutgers, he worked in the Harvard Yenching Library at Harvard University from 1969 to 1970.

In consultation with the schools and departments at the University, Dr. Soong will be responsible for setting library priorities and enhancing the quality of library services and resources. In addition to overseeing performance and accountability of existing library programs and activities, he will work with the library staff to develop new initiatives to better serve the University Community. Another critical aspect of his role as University Librarian at HKUST will be to promote collaboration with other academic and research libraries, especially libraries at other

UGC-funded Universities.

One of his goals in the coming years is to realign resources in a manner that will enable the Library to operate at the highest levels of efficiency in support of the excellence to which we aspire. Openness, teamwork, and clarity of responsibilities are among the core values to guide his administration of the Library. In his new role as University Librarian at HKUST, Dr. Soong would like to lead the Library to the next level of distinction and excellence and make the Library an even better place in which to learn, study and to explore new information and ideas.

INTERNET: Learning English Online

Compiled and maintained by our Language Center, the Internet Resources for

English Learning (http://lc.ust.hk/~learn/english.html) should be the best site for learning English for the UST community. It covers sources on listening, reading, grammar, dictionaries, pronunciation, etc. Here are a few highlights:

Listening: To sharpen your listening abilities, you may want to try listening to

BBC: Learning English ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/) or the

CNNRADIO at CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/). The BBC's site contains the text of many news stories in which the less common words/phrases are defined or

explained. For local news, try RTHK's live broadcasts of English radio programs on Radio 3 and 4 (http://www.rthk.org.hk/).

Reading: A good way to enhance your reading ability and at the same time stay

on top of debates on current local and overseas events, is to read newspaper editorials. You can read the SCMP's editorials via WiseNews (

http://library.ust.hk/info/db/alpha.html#wise). At the opening menu, selecting 分類新聞

概覽(香港) -> 港報社評 will lead you to today's editorials from various local

newspapers. For overseas newspapers, searching with section(editorial) and iraq in LexisNexis Academic (http://library.ust.hk/info/db/alpha.html#au) will find editorials

that contain the word "Iraq" from major newspapers around the world including the Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post, etc.

Checking definitions: When you have words that you want to look up, OneLook

Dictionary (http://www.onelook.com/) may be the best choice since it indexes 950

dictionaries. Altogether, this site provides access to definitions of about 6 million words.

Besides learning online, don't forget the more "traditional" methods of English learning - use the books, videos, and tapes in the Library as well as the Language Center. For the ones in the Library, you may conduct a subject search with

English language -- Textbooks for foreign speakers.

COLLECTION SPOTLIGHT: Two New Electronic Resources

financial and investment community. Through a joint effort with the business school, Finance department in particular, we can now provide this rich database to our students and staff. It offers in-depth domestic and international cross-asset information and has the capability of bringing together current and historical data, news and analytics and spreadsheet functionality. It also contains a suite of cross-functional and cross-market models and sheets that allow users to extract

information they need directly and then manipulate the data tailored to their specific needs. Typical information includes exchange data on stocks, warrants, options, futures, indices that are being traded around the world; over 500,000 government and corporate bonds from more than 100 countries; economic

indicators such as the consumer price index and unemployment rates for G7 and some other countries; and a large number of company profiles including figures

from financial statements for the most recent 5 years. To assist users to tap in these resources, library staff will conduct a series of workshops this Fall.

ProQuest Digital Dissertations replaces our subscription to OCLC FirstSearch's

Dissertation Abstracts. The switch will allow our users to continue to enjoy the

content available in Dissertation Abstracts - the citations and abstracts to over 1.6 million doctoral dissertations and master's theses that were accepted by

universities in the United States, Canada, Hong Kong and other countries since 1861. In addition, our users can now view the first 24 pages of dissertation that were published after 1996.

MEDIA: Infectious Diseases

The SARS crisis has increased people's awareness of contagious disease. In Media Resources you can learn more about the history of plagues and epidemics.

The coming plague (Media Resources RC111 .C66 1997 pt. 1-2) is a 4-part series that discusses the problems of drug-resistant viruses and bacteria, rationing care worldwide, and how political, social and economic environments affect the course of disease.

What surprised most in Hong Kong about SARS was that it was not a 'flu'. In Hong Kong and the rest of the world, people are still keeping close watch on influenza, as we see in The last plague: fighting influenza (Media Resources RA644.I6 L37 1999) which examines its history, how the virus works and why it poses a huge danger to world health.

Bacteria or viruses cause most contagious diseases, but who outside the Biology or Microbiology departments are very clear on what these creatures are? Videos like Bacteria (Media Resources QH581.2 .W675 1996 v. 7), The biology of bacteria (Media Resources QR75 .B56 1992), The biology of viruses (Media Resources QR365 .B56 1992) and Viruses (Media Resources QR41.2 .I58 1997 v.8) give good overviews of these organisms in less than 20 minutes.

To learn more about specific diseases, limit your catalog search to "Media

Resources" and then perform a subject search for a particular disease, e.g., AIDS,

Malaria, Tuberculosis, etc.

Epidemics can be turning points in history. The bubonic plague epidemic of the mid-14th century is a famous case in point, wiping out 1/3 of the population of Europe. The Black death (Media Resources D23 .H57 1995 v.5) shows how this disease changed history.

Epidemics have also been a source of inspiration for writers and filmmakers,

Masque of the red death (Media Resources PN1997.A12 M3798 1990) and The

Andromeda strain (Media Resources PN1997.A15 A53 1990) are fine examples of this genre.

HKUST Institutional Repository

The Library has developed the HKUST Institutional Repository

(http://repository.ust.hk/) as a way for faculty to self-archive their publications,

preserving them in digital form and making the HKUST Community's scholarly research more easily accessible. The Repository uses DSpace software, developed at MIT, which complies with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI); thus allowing articles to be easily discovered by Web search engines, and raising the visibility of HKUST and our faculty. HKUST's DSpace-powered digital repository is the first in HK and Asia, while Cambridge University is setting up the first such repository in the UK.

The Repository is a storehouse for journal articles, conference proceedings, preprints, working papers, theses and dissertations, and research and technical reports. Having completed the initial development stage, it contains over 100 Computer Science technical reports and a number of published papers from the Economics and ISMT departments. More articles are being loaded as we receive permission from authors and publishers to harvest available articles.

Faculty are encouraged to self-archive their publications by depositing their articles online, using the "submission form" link. Authors are especially urged to deposit pre-refereed articles, registering the content with your name and a date stamp, in order to establish the priority of ideas and intellectual property.

Faculty are also urged to exert control over their intellectual property. When submitting papers to journals for publication, you should negotiate with the

publisher to retain copyright, and assign the rights to their work in a manner that allows the broadest possible access. At a minimum, you should retain

self-archiving rights and rights for personal educational use and avoid granting an exclusive long-term license that extends beyond first publication.

More information about the Repository is available online, or you may ask at the Reference Counter or via [email protected]

Access to Baptist Univ. Library

HKUST Undergraduates may now use the Baptist University Library by presenting their HKUST ID cards.

This access privilege offers students the right to use materials and make photocopies inside the Baptist University Library. No materials can be borrowed.

Mrs. Min-Min Chang & President Paul Chu Having led and served our Library for 13 years as its Founding Director, Mrs. Min-min Chang moved on to other challenges in July. The Library Staff Committee organized some activities for colleagues inside and outside the Library to bid her farewell.

An afternoon tea party at the President's Distinguished Guest Lodge was

co-hosted by the Committee and President Chu. About 70 university faculty and staff and 35 library colleagues attended. President Chu, Past President Prof. Woo, VPAA Prof. Yuk Shee Chan, Associate VPAA Prof. Peter Dobson, and Associate University Librarian Mr. Don Wassink gave touching yet humorous speeches on the history of the Library and of Min-min herself. A choir of library colleagues sang a homemade farewell song to Min-min. Two special gifts were presented - an artistic

tailor-made album and a box of over 100 well wishes messages from local and abroad in the form of art works (paintings, designs, etc.), poems and others.

To reminiscence about the past, a "surprise" dinner party was held at a restaurant in the same complex as the old UST Library office in Tsim Sha Tsui. Min-min's husband Prof. Chang Hsin-kang, President of City University of Hong Kong, and eighty-six current and former colleagues joined the party.

We miss Min-min and wish her well in her future endeavors.

China in European Maps - A Library Special Collection / 地圖

中國：圖書館特藏

Comprising the showpieces of the HKUST Library's Antique Maps of China Special Collection, China in European Maps - A Library Special

Collection, consists of five scholarly articles by specialists, 55 plates of selected

maps and prints, and 247 illustrations of maps, prints, and atlases printed in full-color with descriptions and annotations in Chinese and English. Limited editions of the book are available for sale at $1,200 (20% off for order placed before 30 September 2003). To order, visit the Library web site ( http://library.ust.hk/cgi-forms/mapsbook-order.pl), or contact Clara Kwan (2358-6703 / [email protected]).

Information Literacy Tutorial / ILT

The ILT (http://library.ust.hk/serv/skills/infoliteracy.html) is the online version of our

Library class for first year undergraduates. It is currently showcased by the Center for Enhanced Learning & Teaching as a good example of complete online learning for the second time (http://celt.ust.hk/ideas/olt/SApp/). Since September

2000, the ILT has been under constant review. Library staff work closely with colleagues from CELT on regular updates to incorporate new technologies and the latest developments in information literacy, as well as taking into account users' feedback and changing needs.

A major revamp of the ILT last September has received favorable comments from students and visitors alike. Refinement of learning contents in addition to

enhancement of interactive visual learning aids have been carried out again this Summer. The updated version will be available this Fall.

revised 29 August 2003